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Great Pumpkin
.]] The presence of the Great Pumpkin is a strongly-held belief by Linus, who has often been described as the most intelligent of the group, and yet, the most gullible.Linus firmly believes that on Halloween night the Great Pumkin rises out of the pumpkin patch and flies all over the world delivering toys to all the good children of the world. The Great Pumpkin became an annual feature of the Peanuts'' comic strip, provided the basis for an animated television special, It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, and, to some extent, has entered into the wider popular culture. In the ''Peanuts ''comic strip and TV specials Linus' vision is actually the result of a confusion of Santa Claus and the commercialization of Christmas with the Halloween holiday. While the other ''Peanuts characters go trick-or-treating on the holiday, Linus spends his time in a nearby "sincere" pumpkin patch, hoping for the Great Pumpkin's arrival with presents for Halloween. For decades, even as Linus' intellect grew and became more apparent, his mistaken notion was never to be outgrown. He would spend days on end trooping door-to-door, trying to make believers out of everyone he encountered. He very seldom succeeded... and even when he did (with Sally Brown once, and once with Marcie, who accidentally labeled it as the "Great Squash"), no Great Pumpkin would show (as Sally told him, "You owe me restitution!") Linus' faith would never waver, however, and he would catch himself quick at the first sign of self-doubt ("I'm doomed! One quick slip like that could cause the Great Pumpkin to pass you by!") One year, Charlie Brown awoke a sleeping Linus in the pumpkin patch to say he heard a Great Pumpkin sighting "by... Freeman in New Jersey" over the radio. Whether Charlie Brown had actually heard this, or whether it was a subtle effort to encourage Linus to pursue his fantasy thoughts, remains open to debate. Linus failed to get elected as class president because he used his election speech to talk about the Great Pumpkin in a story arc in the strip which was adapted as the television special, You're Not Elected Charlie Brown Objects mistaken for the Great Pumkin Although Linus never actually saw the Great Pumkin, over the years, he has mistaken other objects for the Great Pumkin, but found out the next day he was mistaking. October 30, 1960: This is the first time Linus mistook an object for the Great Pumkin (And the second year Linus waited in the Pumkin Patch). Linus and Charlie Brown spent the evening waiting in the pumpkin patch. When they heard rustling nearby and then saw something rising out of the patch Linus, thinking it was indeed the Great Pumpkin, faints, at which point Charlie Brown notices it's only Snoopy. After coming to, Linus asks Charlie Brown if the Great Pumpkin left any toys, to which Charlie Brown replies, "No toys. Just a used dog". This strip's storyline was the basis for the main plot in It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, only Charlie Brown was replaced with Sally. October 31, 1967: This time Snoopy was sitting with Linus in the patch when they heard rustling. Linus automatically thought it was the Great Pumpkin while a terrified Snoopy was thinking he should have never left the Daisy Hill Puppy Farm. The next day's strip, however, revealed that it was just a "bird hippie" (Woodstock with a hippie hairstyle). October 30, 1982: During an important bowling tournament, Charlie Brown accidentally threw his ball out the front door of the bowling alley. Linus and Sally both got knocked over by the ball as it plowed through the pumpkin patch. Two strips later, Linus was still convinced that it was the Great Pumpkin, when Charlie Brown told him the truth, making Linus very angry. October 31, 1983: Spike was traveling cross-country with his cactus to visit his brother Snoopy. By the time Halloween came around, Spike's story was still being told in parallel with the Halloween-preparations strips. The two stories concluded together when Spike finally arrived in Snoopy's city: he wandered into the pumpkin patch and Linus mistook his cactus to be the Great Pumpkin. October 31, 1993: Again, Sally sitting with Linus out in the pumpkin patch when a Jack O'Lantern rises in the air on the end of a stick. It turns out to be Snoopy playing a prank on Linus. October 31, 1996: Linus, this time in the pumpkin patch alone, sees something he doesn't immediately recognize. When he asks if it's the Great Pumpkin, it turns out to be Rerun with a sheet over his head. He had forgotten to cut the eye holes out of the sheet so he didn't know where he was or where he was going. Rerun spent the night roaming through the yard, and was still wearing the sheet in the next day's strip. October 31, 1999: In the final original Halloween strips before Schulz' passing in early 2000, Linus once again convinced Sally to join him in the pumpkin patch. Although they did see something creep up on them in the pumpkin patch, Sally was again outraged when it turned out to be Snoopy driving a Zamboni. Appearances outside of the Peanuts ''canon In the song by The Royal Guardsmen, "Snoopy Vs. The Red Baron" (recorded without permission from Charles M. Schulz and United Features Syndicate), Snoopy, the World War I Flying Ace, is said to have, "asked The Great Pumpkin for a new battle plan". The Great Pumpkin was depicted as a man in black with a pumpkin for a head in the violent 1986 ''Peanuts parody Bring Me The Head of Charlie Brown ''by Jim Reardon, (later a director and storyboard consultant for ''The Simpsons and co-writer of the Pixar film WALL-E). '' The character was parodied in a recent ''Simpsons Treehouse of Horror episode, as the Grand Pumpkin, who is brought to life by Milhouse. He also made a non-canon role in the episode of Robot Chicken called "Vegetable Funfest", murdering the majority of the Peanuts cast before being destroyed by the Kite-Eating Tree. The Great Pumpkin also features prominently in several "Halloween carols" (in which new Halloween related words are placed to pre-existing music) the lyrics of which are readily available on the Internet. Category:Characters Category:Unseen characters